Byron York

Some conservatives have seen efforts to remove the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, and also from other public places around the South, as the beginning of a slippery slope in which roads and landmarks named after Confederate figures are changed, monuments are removed, and a significant part of American history is obscured from view.

In January 2007, shortly after entering the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton traveled to Iowa, where one of the first questions she faced was about her vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

"As long as you've got enough money for gas, you can stay in the race," says one veteran Iowa Republican operative of the sprawling 2016 presidential field. "It's going to take a long time for this to play out."

It's conventional wisdom that the 2016 Republican presidential race is at such an early stage that the polls don't matter. They're just a measurement of name recognition at this point, some observers say, and the only people really paying attention to the campaign are reporters and hard-core party activists.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, believes passionately that the United States needs more skilled foreign workers. He has long advocated increasing the number of so-called H-1B visas, which allow those workers to come to the U.S. for several years and, in many cases, work for lower wages than current employees. Schmidt is frustrated that Congress hasn't done as he and other tech moguls want.

The White House and some Democrats are livid over congressional Republican attempts to circumvent President Obama's authority to make a nuclear arms deal with Iran. They have a right to be angry -- but not to be surprised.

News that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account to keep secret her communications as Secretary of State should surprise no one. She came to Washington more than 20 years ago determined to keep secrets, and she's still at it.

Why has the Obama administration tied itself in knots over what to call Islamic terrorism? We know the president has rejected the term in favor of "violent extremism," ordering his administration not to refer to Islamic terrorists like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as Islamic.

When Bushes run for president, they portray themselves as more caring, more gentle and more compassionate than their sometimes heartless and harshly ideological fellow Republicans. It worked for George H.W. Bush in 1988, it worked for George W. Bush in 2000, and now Jeb Bush is preparing to give it another go in 2016.

It can be hard to take the idea of a Mitt Romney 2016 presidential run seriously. After all, this is the man who said of losing general election candidates, "They become a loser for life." At least in presidential terms, he had that mostly right.

Ben Bradlee, the legendary Washington Post editor who died recently, has been widely praised for his work building up The Washington Post and bringing down Richard Nixon. His guidance of the paper's Watergate coverage thrilled a generation, and maybe two generations, of aspiring journalists.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- The image some conservatives have of Greg Orman, the wealthy businessman running as an independent against veteran Republican Sen. Pat Roberts here in Kansas, is that Orman is, in the words of a recent Weekly Standard story, a "vacuous cipher."

CONWAY, Arkansas -- In what is likely to become a theme of the last weeks of campaigning before the midterm elections, former President Bill Clinton all but begged voters here in Arkansas not to use their vote as an expression of disapproval for Barack Obama.